


We Don’t Talk About This One

by ZadieWrites



Series: My Pre-Canon Content [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen, Gorlois is also a knight I can’t remember if he was in canon or not but he is here, I made a rope scene parallel I hope you find it very very funny, Mostly Fluff, Multi, No one dies or anything but Gaius has a moment at the end which puts the whole thing in sad context, Parallels, Pre-Canon, Sad Ending, Tagged both gen and multi cause I think you can read it both ways, Team Dynamics, Uther is a bit of a stick in the mud here but he’s mostly decent, Ygraine is a knight and also chaotic try convincing me otherwise, found family-ish, rated for language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:54:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26830228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZadieWrites/pseuds/ZadieWrites
Summary: Uther, Ygraine, Gaius and Gorlois were once close companions, before everything fell apart, who would go on quests together. Through a scene where they escape a castle they’d attempted to infiltrate, I’ll try and show you a bit of what the dynamic was like.
Relationships: Gaius/Uther Pendragon (Merlin), Gorlois & Gaius, Gorlois & Uther Pendragon, Gorlois & Ygraine de Bois, Ygraine de Bois & Gaius, Ygraine de Bois/Uther Pendragon (Merlin)
Series: My Pre-Canon Content [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977820
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	We Don’t Talk About This One

**Author's Note:**

> I only kind of wrote this to make fun merthur parallels, some of which are extremely unsubtle. I really love Uther and Ygraine, I hope that comes across here.

Very appropriate thunder cracked outside of the dark castle of Serpentsparke that currently held a 26 year old Uther Pendragon and his physician, Gaius, who was only a couple years older, hostage. The cell they were contained in was grim and damp with a thin layer of straw atop it’s cold, grey brick floor. 

They each sat on opposite ends of the cell, their backs to the stone wall. Gaius had a crimson piece of Uther’s cloak wrapped around his currently injured leg. 

“I’m sorry.” Uther told the other man.

“What are you sorry for?” 

“It’s my fault you’re always getting in these positions.” 

“Well, not really,” Gaius explained. “I said I’d follow you anywhere, and I meant it. You couldn’t stop me.” 

“. . . why?” The young king asked.

“Why what? Why couldn’t you stop me?”

“No-why would you follow me anywhere? You show me a most extraordinary loyalty . . .” 

There was a pause between the two men, the only sound was the drip of water from a ceiling leak somewhere in the cell and the distant scuffle of what was likely a rodent. 

“It’s my job, sire.” Gaius stated, with a shrug.

“It goes beyond the line of duty. What you do for me, how far you go for me . . . I would never require it of a human being under my employ.” 

“. . . I suppose, then, that we . . . have a sort of bond.” 

Another pause.

“Gaius—“ Uther started to say, in a soft tone.

Then—

CLANG.

Their heads whipping around to look, they saw Ygraine, gripping the iron bars of the cell with a broad grin on her pretty face. 

“Did you think we’d forgotten about you?!” the knight questioned, pulling a ring of keys, rattling and rusted, off of her belt. 

Uther stood up, looking at her with the slightest of amused smirks. 

After unlocking the cell, Ygraine yelled out, “HAHA!” And kicked on the door, hard, causing it to emit an aggressive screeching sound, hitting the wall and sounding remarkably like the thunder outside. 

“GORLOIS!” She hollered down the corridor. “I FOUND THEM!”

“Oh good!” Gorlois’ deep and dignified voice shouted back. “I’m going to assume they’re not dead then!”

“They’re alive! But it looks like Gaius here is barely so, therefore we should get moving!” Ygraine said, with a pointed look at Uther to signify he should help Gaius because they didn’t have much time.

“Ygraine! I could use some help out here!” Gorlois called out. 

Ygraine winced and said, “Yup, gotta go, meet us on the roof!” Before unsheathing the sword Uther gave to her when she pledged her loyalty to him, what felt like decades ago, and sprinting off, leather boots pounding against the tiles.

Uther paused, processing what she said.

“The roof?!” He called out in a questioning tone, but she was already gone. 

Figuring she knew what she was doing, the king went to the physician and held out his arm for Gaius to grab, and the other man did so, grabbing onto him and staggering against Uther, panting into his chest. 

“This will be faster if I carry you,” the warrior reasoned.

“You’re insane.” Gaius’ pale eyes widened. 

The physician must have been thinking that was way too close for them. They’d already been on the brink of genuine, and not fully heterosexual intimacy before.

“I don’t have a choice-“ explained Uther, grabbing the other man and lifting him into his arms, bridal-style.

Gaius protested vocally multiple times as he was brought up the pitch-dark flights of stairs to the roof where Ygraine said they should meet. He was reasonably light; the poor man was built like a bird. Uther supposed that’s why he’d chosen medicine as his field. 

The roof was a barren square of rock. The only thing stopping someone from falling off were a couple pieces of ledge, with gaps in between them. Ygraine and Gorlois were there, with an enormous length of rope that couldn’t have meant anything good. 

“We were beginning to get worried!” Gorlois declared, patting Uther’s shoulder.

“What’s Ygraine planning?” the king asked the knight, a hint of nervousness in his voice. 

“I’m not sure but I’d trust that woman with my life.”

Uther would like to be able to say the same, but honestly Ygraine had a history of acting impulsively and it had gotten them in a fair few tough spots. He trusted her, but his trust had limits, and as he watched Ygraine toss a rope over the side of the tower, he felt she was approaching that limit. Swiftly. 

“I’m going to safely assume you can set me down now,.” Gaius remarked, in a tone that felt passive-aggressive, but was too subtle to tell.

The warrior carefully put him down, and Gorlois stabilized him while he walked up to Ygraine.

“Mind if I ask what you’re doing?” he said, having to shout a bit over the wind. 

The raven-colored clouds above threatened rain but fortunately they hadn’t gotten any. 

“I’m gonna hold the rope and let the rest of you down into the boat below!” she explained, gesturing to the angry, churning black water that the Serpentsparke overlooked, casually, almost cheerfully, which was jarring when contrasted against the stakes of the current situation.

“That doesn’t sound wise. Wouldn’t it be safer to at the very least tie the rope to something?” 

“I don’t think we have time!” she explained, gesturing for Gorlois and Gaius to approach, as she gripped the rope.

“This is a bad idea!” Uther insisted.

“I know but it’s the best we’ve got. Besides, Pendragon! Where’s your sense of adventure?!”

“I don’t really want to watch any of you die tonight!” 

“I’ve got the rope! I’m strong!” 

“And how are you going to get down?” 

“You’ll see!”

Oh, no. That definitely didn’t mean anything good. 

“Gorlois!” Ygraine called. “You’ll help Gaius down!”

“I’m with Uther on this one. This is not a good idea,-“ Gaius said, shakily. 

_______________________________________

Despite the obvious instability of this plan, Gorlois and Gaius went down and dropped into the small boat below, without much conflict. , Ygraine managed to hold the rope without a problem. Uther seemed skeptical she would be able to keep that up. 

But Ygraine was confident. “Look. You need to trust me,-“ she’d said.

And so he did. It was very shortly after he’d decided to finally trust her and use the rope to climb down the tower that the knight realized she had no idea what she’d signed up for. She hadn’t expected him to be much more difficult to hold than Gorlois, but she supposed her fellow knight was built a bit on the slimmer side. 

She ended up standing, horizontally against the piece of ledge just to prevent herself from falling. 

Then. Fuck. She felt the rope slip out of her hands and then she heard a watery crash. Then she heard the barely-suppressed roar of laughter of Gorlois. 

She stood up and looked over the edge, into the water to make sure the man was still alive. She saw the flash of silvery armor above the water beside the boat and sighed in relief. 

She saw the other knight help Uther into the boat, and only once the three men were inside of it, did she make her move. Ygraine had lied when she said she had any sort of plan for how she was going to get from this tower to that boat. So she improvised.

Backing up a few paces, the knight darted ahead, pushing up against the edge of the roof, catapulting herself forward, and for a full couple seconds she was in mid-air. 

It was during these couple seconds she heard Uther shout her name, in a panicked tone. 

When she hit the wooden side of the boat, she rolled with it, until she landed on her back.

“Why would you think that was a good idea?!” the king demanded.

“I didn’t, but I was pretty sure I’d be alright and I was right about that.” Ygraine responded.

She did see a mix of genuine fear and relief in the man’s blue eyes as water clung to his curly black hair, and she felt an apologetic twinge in her chest.

“Okay, I should have tied the rope to something, so I wouldn’t have to jump off.” 

“Yes! You should have!” 

There was a pause as the four companions adjusted to the fact that it was over and that they were all alive, and they could go home now, before Ygraine dared to be bold again.

“You have to admit that was pretty funny.” she said.

Uther’s jaw tightened in response but his broad, armor-clad shoulders had relaxed a bit and he didn’t respond, probably thinking he was above that. 

“I really thought you had died in there,-” he told her, in a softer voice, a less kingly edge in his tone. 

“. . . Really? I’m the only warrior in Camelot who can beat you in a sword fight and you think anything in that castle can kill me?” she asked.

“Hey, I’m here too,-“ Gorlois reminded them.

“You won by a technicality—“ Uther started to say.

_______________________________________

Gaius listened to his friends bicker about swordplay, who won which fight in which year, and the like, and it was good. It was comforting. To hear them talk at length about things that mattered very little. It kept the young mage’s mind off of all of the things that mattered a lot. 

Like whether or not Uther would look at him differently if he found out he studied magic as a hobby. Or whether or not the way Lady Vivienne looked at her husband’s king would turn out to mean anything at all. Whether or not he deserved the love of that beautiful witch who had mastered the art of healing magic. 

Because this . . . felt temporary. It felt like the first chapter of a very long book. Maybe even a prologue. And Gaius feared what was in the rest of it, because he knew people, beings that had read the table of contents. And it didn’t seem good. 

But in the meantime he could just focus on this. The sound of the water as it lapped up the sides of the boat that currently was drifting home, combined with the lighthearted chatter of the other three who occupied it. Somewhere in the soup of banter he heard Ygraine’s rich, infectious laugh. A true warrior’s laugh. 

And Gaius loved them all.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried something new with this one and I’m proud of how it came out! I’ve never been good at the sort of fun, action stuff but this show has so much of it I wanted to give it a try! Thanks for reading, y’all are fucking awesome.


End file.
